Medio Oriente

Once again Turkey will be holding general elections, on November 1st, because the main political parties failed to form a coalition government after the June results. The previous elections marked the end of the political supremacy of the Justice & Development Party (AKP) led by the current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the President of the Republic Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after their party won the absolute majority of seats in the Turkish National Assembly in 2002, 2007 and 2011. Continua a leggere →

The recent general elections held in Turkey have left the AKP, the Justice & Development Party, without the possibility to form a one-party majority as it has happened since its first electoral victory back in 2002. Most notably, the HDP, a left-leaning party and strong advocate of the rights of minorities – Kurds in particular – gained the sufficient amount of votes needed to enter the Turkish Assembly: there’s a 10% electoral threshold. We have already discussed the domestic consequences of the vote; on this occasion, we would like to tackle the important economic consequences that the elections might have, considering the recent developments in the region i.e. the Turkish intervention against both the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Islamic State (IS). After the elections, the Turkish lira slumped 5% and the Borsa Istanbul 100 Index opened with a 8.2% loss.

Russia has a well-known anti-Semitic tradition starting from 18th century and which brought in European lexicon such term as pogrom. Soon after the creation of Israel, Soviet Union became one of its main antagonists, which restricted Jewish migration from its territory and supplied military and economic aid to neighboring Arab countries, like Syria and Egypt. After the collapse of the Soviet state started the migration en-masse from ex-Soviet republics to Israel, but in 1990s still the relations were far from being very worm. In early 2000s, with the First Putin presidency started the normalization of Russia-Israel relations. Despite there were topics which created some havoc in the relations between two countries, like the Russian role in Iranian nuclear program, Russian support for Palestinian cause and the use of Hezbollah of Russian weapons in 2006, in late 2000s we see what might be called a breakthrough in bilateral relations. Since then Russian leaders are welcomed as a dear guests.